Gallup Brain: Strom Thurmond and the 1948 Election

by Steve Crabtree, Contributing Editor

Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott's praise for Strom Thurmond's 1948
presidential candidacy has unleashed a furor that has damaged the
incoming Senate majority leader's credibility and may yet deliver a
serious blow to his political career. The intensity of the reaction
to Lott's comments prompts a look back at the 1948 election itself
and the prevailing public opinion climate of the time, to see how
social mores have changed in the past half-century.

Thurmond's campaign was itself born out of support for
segregationist policy. He and a number of other prominent Southern
Democrats walked out of the party's convention that year in protest
over efforts led by incumbent President Harry S. Truman to include
support for civil rights in the party's platform. As the candidate
of the new States' Rights Democratic Party, Thurmond's goal was to
draw enough votes away from the major parties to force the election
into the House of Representatives, where a block by segregationist
Southern and Midwestern congressmen could prevent Truman's
re-election.

Dynamics of the Election

That didn't happen, although the election was one of the closest
in American history. There was discontent with Truman that year on
a number of fronts -- including high taxes, labor strife, and the
onset of the Cold War. In a Gallup Poll conducted that April, only
37% of Americans said they approved of Truman's performance as
president.

Truman did manage to beat Republican Thomas Dewey by one of the
smallest margins ever -- to the consternation of Gallup and other
polling organizations, most of which predicted a tidy win for Dewey
(mainly because they stopped polling several weeks before the
election and missed a late shift to the incumbent Truman). Erosion
of support for third-party candidates in the final weeks of the
campaign is frequently cited as a factor in the last-minute shifts;
in the case of Gallup's numbers, it was Progressive Party candidate
Henry Wallace, rather than Thurmond, who had an effect in that
regard, since a sizable proportion of Wallace's supporters defected
to Truman as the election approached.

Thurmond did make history, however, by carrying four Southern
states -- South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, and Lott's home state
of Mississippi -- and becoming one of only two third-party
candidates in the post-war period to win electoral votes (George
Wallace was the other in 1968). Historians point to Thurmond's
showing as one of the factors that derailed Truman's civil rights
agenda.

Social Mores

It's a telling indicator of social change over the past
half-century that in 1948, the idea of the federal government
legislating equal opportunities for all citizens was troubling to
so many Americans. In February of that year, Truman proposed a
broad civil rights program that would include legislation against
lynching and using poll taxes to keep poor blacks from voting.
Truman also proposed the desegregation of the armed forces and the
establishment of a permanent Fair Employment Practices
Commission.

A national Gallup Poll conducted in March 1948 gauged Americans'
reactions to Truman's program. Most -- 63% -- said they had heard
of it, but within that group there was deep ambivalence. A third
(33%) said the whole program should be passed, while 31% said it
should not, and 34% would not offer an opinion on the matter.

That level of uncertainty is consistent with the idea that for
many people, the civil rights issue wasn't a simple question of
whether blacks and whites should be treated equally. Especially in
the South, many continued to view forced desegregation as
federalism run amok -- Uncle Sam trying to dictate values that
still differed widely between Northern and Southern states. The
March poll found Americans were highly suspicious of federal
involvement in enforcing civil rights; 47% believed that such
matters were "not within the province of the government" and should
be "left to the employer" or "not dictated." An additional 2% felt
such matters should be left to the states.

Even with regard to the most horrific civil rights violation,
lynching, there was considerable sentiment that the federal
government should stay out of it -- 41% of respondents said state
governments should be left alone to deal with this issue (although
a plurality, 46%, did think the federal government should have the
right to get involved).

With regard to poll taxes, which in effect disproportionately
kept poor blacks from voting, Americans expressed sentiment more
favorable to blacks, with two-thirds saying such taxes should be
abolished.

But the public was clearly not ready to accept the idea of
desegregation of the armed forces -- 63% thought that black troops
and white troops should remain separated, while 26% thought they
should live and work together. This issue was especially sensitive,
since the memory of hundreds of thousands of blacks serving in the
armed forces during World War II was still fresh in Americans'
collective consciousness.

Key Points

The extent to which public sentiment in 1948 seems out of step
with contemporary ideals sheds some light on why Lott's comments
have generated such widespread indignation. Thurmond's 1948
campaign was possible only because public attitudes regarding civil
rights 54 years ago were so different that they are largely
irreconcilable with predominant modern values. Lott struck a chord
by implying that the hard-won social change in the interim was not
necessarily for the better.

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